


folie à deux

by element78



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Divorce, au: no zombies, gratuitous use of cigarettes as metaphors, past rick/shane one-sided pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:23:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2344949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/element78/pseuds/element78
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It really shouldn't be this easy to pick up the pieces and move on.</p>
<p>(Rick is a recent divorcee who does not need rescuing, Daryl is the extremely reluctant hero who rescues him anyway, and life is a truly sucky thing to have happen to decent people.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. un

**Author's Note:**

> This fic could easily be titled My Favorite Rickyl Tumblr Headcanons in Story Format, because that’s basically what it is. I can’t even begin to name all the various tumblr users who have influenced this fic in some way, so I’ll lay out a blanket acknowledgement: If you ship Rickyl and you’re on tumblr, this fic is inspired by, and dedicated to, you.
> 
> This sucker is currently clocking in at fifteen thousand words- and counting, and at least I've given up calling it a one-shot- so four chapters is my conservative estimate. I just wanted to write some porn. Why can I never just write porn?

He doesn’t mean to go to a bar in one of the worst neighborhoods in his county, and he certainly doesn’t mean to get drunk- a lot of things are happening recently that he doesn’t mean to happen- but good intentions count for nothing, and the evening is enough of a blur that he can’t tell how true to those intentions he was. He comes back to himself eventually, when he’s sitting out on the curb in the drizzling rain, a tall shape standing over him and red-blue-red-blue lights splashing over the wall running beside them. They can’t see the cruisers from here- they’re around behind the building next to the bar, safely out of sight.

“Did I hit you?” he asks mildly, curling his right hand into a fist and watching the bruised skin pull tight. There’s blood on his knuckles, blood in his mouth, a familiar stuffy tightness in his nose that says someone got at least one good shot in there, beer soaked into his clothes- he’d gotten into a good old-fashioned bar brawl. The mood he’s been in lately, he probably started it.

“Nah,” the other man says. There’s a short, sharp _snap-hiss_ of a lighter and Rick squints up at him, studying his face by the light of the sallow flame. A second later it’s out and the only light now is the flashing cruiser lights and the cherry-red tip of the cigarette as the other man inhales. There’s the beginnings of what will probably be a spectacular bruise around his left eye that Rick has a feeling perfectly matches the tight, tender skin on his right hand knuckles, but the man said no, so he leaves it at that. 

“Did I start it?” he asks after a few minutes. The other man snorts.

“Man, you ain’t that wasted,” he says, kicking idly at a chunk of asphalt, and Rick remembers him now- the bartender, dweller of shadows, careless with their drinks but strictly mindful of his own personal space. He’d been handsy enough with Rick, though, grabbing him by the arm and bodily hauling him out here, safe from the police. Which, in retrospect, made Rick’s first question seem stupid, as it was doubtful the man would be inclined to do him any favors if Rick had been the one to give him that shiner.

“Humor me,” he half-asks, and the man looks down at him, his face cast into shadow, and says nothing. Finally he turns and eases himself down on the curb next to Rick, careful not to touch but close enough to share warmth.

“Nah,” he says again, and offers Rick the cigarette. Rick doesn’t believe his answer, not after how long it took him to decide on it, but he takes the cigarette anyways. Lori would kill him if he came home smelling like smoke- but that’s not a concern anymore. 

“Why’d you help me, then?” he asks. He holds the cigarette gracelessly, fumbling, his fingers unpracticed. There’s blood from his mouth on the end of it after his first drag so he doesn’t bother giving it back.

“Said your wife left you,” the other man says. He leans back, arms braced behind him, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. “Also said you were a cop, a sheriff’s deputy.” He says _sheriff’s deputy_ like the words don’t fit right on his tongue, like they’re dirty words and he’s not sure he has permission to say them. “Didn’t think you’d want them findin’ you in there.”

Around the corner, the voices suddenly raise into a frenzy pitch, someone yelling, the thud of a fist hitting flesh- someone slipped their leash and attacked one of the other dogs in line, Rick thinks. He’d have hated to get this callout, had he been on-duty. He wonders if Shane is over there. 

“Yeah,” he says, and smokes the stranger’s cigarette in silence.

He and Shane used to sneak away and smoke sometimes, when they’d been young and immortal and tight as brothers. Shane would steal the cigarettes from his dad, who Rick’s dad had called a ‘deadbeat’ for much longer than either Rick or Shane had known the meaning of the word. They’d sneak out back behind the shed and fumble over the matches, or the lighter on the rare times Shane could lift that too- ten dead matches for every one that lit, a dozen useless clicks on the lighter as their hands shied away from the potential of flame. They’d always choke on the first inhale and laugh at each other and try to blow smoke rings like Rick’s grandpa did with his glossy old briar pipe, talk shit and try to outsmoke the other- but there were some days when it wouldn’t be a competition, when Shane would be unable to look away from Rick’s long fingers on the cigarette, when Shane would wrap his lips around the cigarette in a way that made Rick go hot and squirmy inside. Those days, they’d sit in each other’s space and talk softly and share glances and quick touches in loaded silences- flirting with each other, falling in love with each other, long before they turned their attentions outward. Rick can still remember the day Shane took the last cigarette in the pack and Rick stole it from him half-smoked and finished it off himself, ignoring Shane’s giggles and elbows digging into his ribs and constant _ew-gross_ comparisons to a mouth-on-mouth kiss- _you’re kissin’ me, Rick, stoppit_ \- can still remember the echo of the taste of Shane’s mouth on the cigarette.

All he tastes on this cigarette is blood and nicotine and beer.

“You drive here?” the man asks as the last of the cruisers pull away, the headlights washing over the wall before disappearing and pitching them into near-total darkness. Rick makes a noise of confirmation- which meant Shane hadn’t been here, he supposes, as Shane would’ve recognized his car and come looking for him.

“I can get myself home,” he says- he’ll call a cab, if nothing else- but when he tries to stand, the world twists sideways and he staggers, tripping over the other man’s legs, catching himself on the wall beyond. The beer and the nicotine sit uneasily on his empty stomach- he can’t remember the last meal he had that wasn’t beef jerky out of the vending machine at the station. It’s been too long since he’s had to take care of himself. He’s forgotten how to do it.

“The hell’s wrong with you?” the man demands, one part worried and two parts exasperated, standing now close-but-not-too-close to Rick. Rick drops his head and breathes through his mouth, feeling the tremors in his arms, in his knees.

“I need to eat something,” he says, and turns away from the wall and staggers again, grabbing blindly for support. He catches the man’s arm just below the elbow, and can feel the instant steel-cord tension that thrums through him, can feel him try to pull away without moving, and for a moment it’s enough to anchor him-

Then Rick throws up on his boots.

\-----

In the harsh too-bright lighting of the McDonald’s, Daryl Dixon looks surprisingly human. Nothing at all remains of the distant, uncaring god he had been behind the counter of the bar, of the rough gentleness of the reluctant hero in the alley. He’s more real here- pale eyes and dark hair, a face that had once been almost femininely pretty before time and wear had taken their toll, steady hands and a loping stride. He orders himself some fries and a drink and takes up his whole side of the booth with his careless sprawl and won’t look Rick in the eyes, and it’s easier to say nothing to him than it has ever been with anyone else. Rick’s surrounded by people who like to talk. He’s never realized that until now, with Daryl’s steady silence as contrast.

Honestly, he can’t even say why Daryl’s here when this is so clearly not his problem. He seems like the kind of person who sees things through, who takes responsibility for something with every intention of actually being responsible for it, and somewhere between the bar fight and dragging Rick’s sorry ass into the McDonald’s, he’s become responsible for Rick.

“I can get myself home,” Rick says for the second time that night, and this time he actually means it. Scattered between them is the bare-bones remains of two double cheeseburgers and a large fries- water to drink, he knows better than to dump a ton of sugar on an already unbalanced system. He’s feeling better than he has in days, less shaky and more stable, no longer a simmering volcano waiting to erupt. “Take me back to the bar, I’ll get my car.”

Daryl looks up at him, his gaze skimming over Rick’s cheekbone and expertly avoiding actually meeting Rick’s eyes. He says nothing, just shrugs and takes a sip of his drink and looks away. It feels cheap, somehow- shallow, maybe- to let it all just end this way, after everything Daryl’s already done for him tonight. Rick looks away, uncomfortable with his shame, knowing full well any attempts to get closer, to get to know his makeshift hero, will be firmly rebuffed.

“Thank you,” he adds, his mother having raised him better than to skip over that, and Daryl shifts uncomfortably in his booth.

“Sure,” he says, and finds firmer footing with his next words. “Don’t mention it.” Ever, please.

Rick nods, then slithers out of the booth to go order himself another cheeseburger, because he needs it and because his current company will hardly think him rude for it, and while he’s at the counter he turns to study the other man, memorizing his face- the last he’ll see of it.

\-----

That was supposed to be it, the beginning, middle, and end of it. He has no intention of going back to that bar, and his and Daryl’s lives had never managed to intersect prior to that. He smells cigarette smoke on his shirt when he goes to throw it into the wash a few days later, and for a moment he’s back in that bar again, seeing that sly smile tease the edge of Daryl’s lips as he slips neatly away from the empty glasses and expectant stares of his customers, always managing to be busy with something else when refills were needed- the worst customer service Rick’s encountered in a bar, but there hadn’t exactly been a tip jar, so it had hardly mattered. But then the shirt is in the wash and soon smells only of laundry soap, and that’s it, that’s the final word on the chapter of Rick’s life titled _Daryl Dixon_.

Except it’s not.

He’s standing in the beer aisle of the grocery store, giving serious consideration to just buying a six-pack and drinking at home, since his drinking in public appears to be hazardous to other peoples’ health, when he becomes suddenly, keenly aware of another presence behind him. He glances over his shoulder, fast and predator-wary, and sees- of course- Daryl Dixon. He’s got his weight rocked back on his heels and his head tilted to the side, eyes narrow, like he can’t quite place Rick in the light of day.

For Rick, it feels almost like a betrayal. He doesn’t _belong_ here, in the real world, in the aisle of a grocery store doing a mundane thing like shopping. He belongs in that bubble world of that night, the unsympathetic bartender with a surprising soft spot for his troublemaking patron, beer and cigarettes and blood and greasy French fries- it’s like a fairy tale come to life, a dragon crouched in the aisle behind Rick, disappointing and terrifying in its reality instead of exciting.

Too late to turn away now, to pretend they don’t know each other- they’re caught in the tableau a heartbeat too long, the moment frozen in time with crystal clarity, a fly caught in amber. Then Daryl shifts awkwardly and ducks his head.

“You gonna drink that all on your own?” he asks, and Rick looks blankly away, finds his hand resting absently on one of the forty-eight-can cube boxes.

“No,” Rick says distantly, and only then thinks to snatch his hand away, fast like it’s been burned. 

“Should’ve let them arrest your ass,” Daryl mutters. And Rick’s not an idiot, he recognizes a defense mechanism when he sees one- Daryl’s words are barbed, but turned inwards, tearing into his own flesh, wounding himself for daring to care even a little bit when his caring had so clearly accomplished nothing- but Rick still stings with the sensation of having been judged and found wanting.

“Maybe you should have,” he agrees, and turns away. There’s a reason fairy tales aren’t meant to come to life- the memory of that reluctant hero of that night spoiled by the person he is in the harsh light of day- they can only disappoint. 

Rick moves away, threading his way through the aisles, only to stop dead at the sound of a familiar voice piping high above the ambient noise of bland grocery store music and squeaky cart wheels. Because he’s a masochist, he has to look, turning to see down the aisle he’d been walking past- cereal aisle, the bane of every parent’s existence. And sure enough, there’s Carl, running towards the other end of the aisle, and Lori beside the cart, beautiful as always- she’s in the pregnancy sweet spot, not yet showing, glowing with motherly pride, probably just got over the morning sickness- Rick’s been through it all before with her, he knows all the ups-downs and twists-turns. Carl comes running back to her, a jumbo-sized box of Cocoa Puffs in hand, and Rick simmers silently as she smiles indulgently and puts it in the cart. Such things never used to make it past the mom inspection, but apparently Lori’s not so keen on casting herself in the role of Bad Guy Who Always Says No, now that Rick’s out of the job.

And beside her is Shane, lazily draped over the cart handle. He says something and Lori smiles and blushes ever-so-prettily and turns away, and really, Rick should be grateful she’s found someone who can make her laugh again, because he can’t even remember the last time he fulfilled that role. Instead all he feels is the scalding burn of betrayal, tinged with the vicious aftertaste of jealousy, and he ducks away before the happy family can see him. 

Daryl’s only just leaving the beer-and-chips aisle when Rick nearly plows into him, spared collision only by grace of Daryl’s quick reflexes. Ignoring his startled _what the hell_ , Rick pushes past him and grabs the first beer that he can reach.

“I changed my mind,” he says to Daryl, even though Rick owes him absolutely no explanation whatsoever. He needs to leave- he can never come here again- one of the shitty things about divorce, he thinks darkly, one of the things they never tell you, is that you have to split custody of everything. Not only do they have to figure out who gets the house and the kid and the dog and which friends go with whom, but also who gets the mechanic and the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the best first-date restaurant, and who has to completely rearrange their social geography. Rick got the house but Lori got Carl- the benefits of being the mother, he supposes- and now she’s got the grocery store, and Rick can’t even go to his favorite bar when he’s off-duty because Shane might be there. He feels disjointed and anchorless, a stranger in his own hometown, and maybe that’s why he turns to Daryl, who’s standing helplessly behind him, and says, “Wanna help me drink it?”

Daryl’s looking at Rick like he’s holding a gun to the man’s head, like Daryl’s his prisoner- like he’s caught in the undertow, like he’s trapped in Rick’s orbit and doesn’t know how to break himself free. “No,” he says, his tone suggesting he’s doing Rick a favor, and he really is. “That stuff’s shit,” he adds, and Rick really should just leave it at that and go.

Instead, he looks at the beer in his hand- Bud Lite, yeah, he’s not drinking that crap. He drops the box back where he’d found it and moves a few steps down the aisle, stopping at a stack of Coors, and turns back to Daryl, eyebrows raised, awaiting his approval. 

“ ‘M I gonna have to buy you dinner again?” Daryl asks suspiciously- a genuine question, and Rick smiles at the absurdity of it. Drinks and dinner, he’s been out on a date with this man- complete with the utter embarrassment of throwing up on his shoes, which Rick has never actually done before, but he’s heard enough first date horror stories to know that’s not unheard of. 

“I have food,” he says. Sure, food- macaroni and cheese, frozen dinners, the makings for spaghetti and omelets- it’s like being in the academy again, only with a slight increase in the quality of the garbage he was eating.

Daryl looks at him askance, not entirely convinced- a stray dog Rick is coaxing, trying to lure in with the promise of warm food and shelter, and Rick doesn’t know why he’s so fixated on this stranger who should mean nothing to him, why this stranger is so fixated on him, but it feels like the world’s finally started spinning in the right direction again when Daryl finally dips his head in a slight nod.

\-----

Shaving, Rick had decided about a week ago, is for married men.

He looks younger when he shaves, looks prettier, and neither of those is something he’s interested in anymore. He looks into the bathroom mirror- one toothbrush in the holder on the sink, medicine cabinet cleaned out and mostly empty, things he tries not to see too much- and traces his fingers over his stubble. He drops his hands to brace on either side of the sink and leans forward, resting his head against the mirror, staring himself in the eye until his breath fogs up the glass too much for him to see. He’s not an unattractive man- exactly the opposite, the less clean-cut he keeps himself, the more female attention he seems to garner- but that was never the problem. He’s starting to show his age- grey in his beard, grey touching his temples, lines carved into the skin around his eyes, permanently etched into his forehead. An eternity of grief in his eyes.

_You have an old soul, Ricky_ , his mother liked to say, and when he was just Ricky, he’d liked the sound of that. It meant he was wiser, more mature than the other kids his age. Now he knows better- not wiser, not more mature, just harder ridden by life.

He’s scrambling himself some eggs for breakfast, because flipping an omelet this early in the morning is asking far too much from a mere mortal man, when he hears footsteps on the front porch, a young voice raised in excitement. The front door is locked, and Carl clearly isn’t expecting that- this has been his house right up until thee months ago- so Rick hears a loud _thump_ as his boy most likely tries to open the door and only succeeds in throwing himself right into it. Rick’s there to open the door before Carl has to ring the bell, but it’s clearly too late, an unpleasant reminder of his new reality. His son greets him with a vague mutter of ‘hey Dad’ and heads into the house, no longer bounding in excitement like a puppy. Rick scuffs a hand through Carl’s hair, earning him a squirm away and a quiet giggle, then turns back and braces himself in the doorway, a physical barrier that cannot be passed, and looks up at Lori.

She’s still the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, and it shatters his heart into pieces to see only grief and regret in her eyes where once there was love.

“Hey, Rick,” she says, folding her hands together in front of her belly, almost protectively- like Rick could ever, for one second, even consider hurting her or her child. “Do you think you could,” she begins, then jerks her chin a little, indicating for him to come out onto the porch, since she so clearly wasn’t invited back into the house.

Rick considers her for a moment, then turns to look over his shoulder, at his son sitting on the couch, TV remote in hand. “Carl,” he calls, and when Carl looks at him, “I’ve got eggs on the stove, don’t let ‘em burn?”

“Sure,” Carl says, and clambers off the couch as Rick steps outside and closes the door behind him. Lori moves carefully away, a delicate, fey creature in her gauzy dress, her long hair let loose to tumble freely over her shoulders, and Rick’s not jealous, he just can’t remember the last time she got all pretty like this for him. It’s that first blush of romance, he knows, when everything is golden sunshine and rose petals and marathon sex and finding the other person’s flaws to be cute little quirks instead of acceptable reasons for homicide- that comes later, when the fire of romance is dead and all that’s left is the tempered steel of love that will endure, or the bitter ashes of something that once burned bright.

She and Shane have _nothing_ in common, they are polar opposites, they won’t work out- except they might, and even after the shitty treatment he’s received from both of them Rick can’t find it in him to wish them ill.

“I saw you at the grocery store yesterday,” Lori says. She hesitates, careful with her words, careful of their weight- she’s done him irreparable damage, she’s left him scarred and bleeding, and now she’s careful with him. “I saw who you left with,” she amends herself finally, and that- that confuses Rick. He and Daryl had left the grocery store separate, had driven to Rick’s house separate, Daryl refusing to be chauffeured- they’d interacted on a bare minimum level, the only way she could know who he left with was if she followed them to Rick’s house.

“And?” Rick asks, because it’s none of her business anyway, although he can easily understand why she might be put out by this. He calls to mind the image Daryl had presented yesterday- too-long hair hanging in his eyes, scruffy beard, threadbare shirt and a jacket with sleeves that covered his hands down to his fingertips, worn cargo pants with a gaping hole over one knee, battered boots with worryingly suspicious henna-brown stains on them. He is the exact opposite of everything Lori tries to be, and maybe polar opposites are good for people after all, since he seems to be exactly what Rick needs right now.

They hadn’t talked much yesterday- they’d drank in mostly silence, bitched about their respective jobs a little, and then Daryl went home. It had been like the adult version of a playdate, a little- a very little- bit of social interaction.

“Do you know why I left you, Rick?” Lori asks, in her too-patient mom voice, the one she uses when Carl’s trying to sucker them into doing his homework for him. Rick stares at her for a very long while, until she starts to shift uncomfortably under his gaze, then pointedly lowers his eyes to her belly.

“Yeah, I know why,” he says, looking her in the eye again, and she wraps her arms around herself.

“No,” she says, and she sounds a little angrier now, more impatient, less condescending. “That’s not the reason why, that was…” She shakes her head, angrily blows a loose strand of hair out of her face, and dares a single step closer, the closest she’s been to him since she’d given him the divorce papers. She smells like sandalwood cologne, a man’s scent, like she’d been wearing a man’s shirt all morning and only got dressed just before she walked out the door. “You need to be more careful, Rick,” she says. “This is a small town, people talk.”

“Talk about what? What is there to-?” He gets it mid-word, a sickening gut-punch of realization- neighbors twitching aside lacy curtains, phones in their hands, the small-town rumor mill in full swing- and here was Rick, getting home at the small hours of the morning, looking like he’s been in a fight, welcoming such characters as Daryl Dixon into his house. “You thought I was having an affair with Daryl?” he asks, barely able to comprehend the words even as he says them.

“Well, what was I supposed to think, Rick?” Lori counters, good and mad now, barely remembering to censor her tone to a hiss instead of a yell. “You just out of the blue tell me that you’re- you’re-”

“Bi,” Rick provides helpfully. “And you weren’t supposed to think anything. You were supposed to _know_ that I loved you, I married _you_. Not Daryl, not anybody else. You.” He rolls away from her, scrapes one hand down his face, dragging at his lips with his fingertips. “It didn’t change anythin’, Lori. Not ‘til you made it.”

“Oh, do not blame me for this,” Lori said, shaking her head in fury. “This is not my fault.”

“So it’s mine?” Rick asks. “You knew I was bi, Lori. From the moment we met, you knew.”

“I knew you had a crush on Shane,” Lori snapped. “I thought you got over it.”

She makes it sound so easy, like when she’d fallen in love with Elvis during sophomore year and had forgotten him for Sean Connery within six months. She makes it sound like Shane wasn’t Rick’s everything for so many years of his life, like Rick hadn’t worshipped him, like Rick hadn’t loved him with every fiber of his being. She doesn’t understand, still doesn’t understand. She never will.

“I did get over it,” Rick says. “Betrayal does that.”

“And Daryl?” Lori asks, dropping the name off her tongue with obvious distaste, and a vitriolic rinse of protectiveness surged through Rick at her tone. “Who’s he, then? And don’t say just a friend, you don’t have friends like that.”

“I went to a bar last week,” Rick says, pressing closer into Lori, leaning into her personal space. “Got drunk, started a fight. Daryl got me outta there before the other deputies showed up. He saved me from gettin’ arrested, probably saved my career.”

Lori’s eyes go soft in a dangerous way, anger melting quickly into pity, but she knows better than to say anything. If nothing else, they know now how to wound each other, and so how to best avoid wounding each other. 

“I didn’t see it coming, Rick,” she says. “And when you told me, I thought.” She stops and blinks and looks away, tears gathering wetly on her eyelashes. “I thought you were trying to tell me I wasn’t enough for you anymore,” she says finally.

Rick backs off, lets her have her space. He smiles a little, humorlessly. “You were everything to me,” he says, and he has these words now, when they mean nothing- six months ago, when they would have saved his marriage, he hadn’t known how to say them, or why he would even need to. There’s a hanging silence between them, misunderstandings and missed opportunities and misjudgments- like something floating in the air, gossamer-light, and every time Rick grabs for it, it slips away. Lori slipped away when he wasn’t looking, when he thought everything was good between them, because he had assumed, and she hadn’t asked.

Such a small thing, to destroy everything.

Lori sets her jaw and lifts her chin, stubborn and strong, solid steel at her core. She has fucked up, and badly, and cut a good man deep in the process, and she knows this. But it is what it is, and she would play the cards she had been dealt. She tucks one hand into her purse, pulls out a business card and looks at it for a second before holding it out to Rick, her hand shaking.

“Shane wants to get a paternity test done,” she says softly, and Rick nearly drops the card like it’s burned him. Instead, he takes it and turns it over, studying the clinic name neatly embossed on the card’s surface. “He’s paying for it,” she adds with a weak smile, like that makes any of this better, excuses any of this.

“Is this even necessary?” Rick asks, because it needs to be asked, and Lori flushes and bites her lower lip and nods quickly, not meeting his gaze.

“I’m sorry, Rick,” she says quietly, and turns on her heel and moves away, and Rick tucks the card into his pocket and turns to head back inside, to his son and his cold eggs and his broken life.

\-----

The bar closes at three and Daryl’s sitting out on the curb at three-oh-eight, his cigarette smoked down to the filter, when Rick finally pulls up into the parking lot. He looks up, the nearby streetlight casting him into odd shadows, his face bisected by the harsh orange light, and Rick can’t read his expression. He can guess its meaning, though.

“Thought it might be you,” Daryl says as Rick climbs out of his car. “Bar’s closed.”

“I know,” Rick says mildly. “I needed to talk, not drink.”

“The ex again?” Daryl asks, and when Rick nods, he snorts and takes another long drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out into a cloud. “I ain’t good at talkin’,” he says warningly, resignedly, like he knows nothing he says will convince Rick to leave, like he’s not sure he wants Rick to leave regardless.

Rick sinks down to the ground, his back against the car’s tire, facing Daryl but a good twenty feet away from him. “I don’t have anyone else,” he says truthfully, and Daryl stares at him blankly, like Rick had just slipped into another language, like what Rick said just does not compute. The cigarette, forgotten in his hand, burns down enough to burn his finger, and he drops it quick-like and twists himself around to crush it with the toe of his boot, sucking on the singed finger absently. He takes another cigarette out but doesn’t light it, just tucks it between his lips and holds it there.

“Why me?” he asks finally, careful not to look at Rick. He’s so quiet Rick has to almost lean forward to hear him, and he’s shyly flustered as soon as he says it, lowering his head defensively, fussing busily with the cigarette box in his hands, and he looks so much like a puppy that got caught doing something bad Rick has to bite down the urge to coo at him.

“You picked me, remember?” Rick asks, thumping his head back against the tire, smiling absently, fondly, at the memory. It hasn’t been that long, but it feels longer- there’s something ageless, timeless, in Daryl, in how he and Rick fit together. With Shane, everything’s a competition, a race, a test to see who will lead and who will follow, a friendly back-and-forth that turned unfriendly overnight, and now Rick feels like he’s fighting for his life against a man who knows his every move, who’s honed his edges and tempered his steel and tested his wit on Rick himself. Being around Daryl’s effortless, compared to that- Rick can breathe, he can relax, he can just _be_ , in a way he never truly could with Shane. “You saved my life here, that night.”

Daryl snorts at that, shakes his head a little, dares a quick glance up through the hair falling into his eyes. “I ain’t done that,” he mutters, his accent growing thicker, choppier, with the rising emotion, and Rick lets it go rather than press his point and make it worse. They sit in silence, somehow comfortable more than awkward, until Daryl’s recovered his footing and dares to speak first. “So what’d she want, anyways?” he asks, taking his unlit cigarette out of his mouth and resting his hands on his knees, shifting his body just enough for the streetlight’s ugly orange light to shine on his face properly. The shiner that’s mostly faded catches the shadows just right and darkens his left eye socket until it’s like the bruise is brand new again.

For a moment, Rick debates not telling him- there are limits, or at least there should be. But he sought Daryl out, he’s the one wanting to talk. “Paternity test,” he says quietly, and Daryl’s breath hisses in fast and quiet, his eyes full of sympathy.

“Shit,” he says gracelessly, then winces a little bit. “Sorry, man,” he adds, and Rick can’t tell if he means for his language or for the mess Rick’s life has become.

“She thought _I_ was having an affair,” Rick says, allowing himself a smile, a flat chuckle, at the complete lack of humor in any of this. He looks up at Daryl, a rough man with bruises and scars, sitting in front of a hick bar, and dares to add: “With another man.”

Daryl stirs a little at that, shifting up ever so slightly like a dog going on-point, then rearranging himself into a more comfortable position. Thoughtful, but not offended, not taking Rick’s potential bisexuality as a challenge. “So she went out an’ got a man of her own,” he says once he’s still again. “Makes sense.” His tone is dry, resigned- not insulting Rick, not dismissing Lori, just roughly cynical and despairing of the world. He puts the cigarette back in his mouth and tips his head forward as he snaps the lighter open, cupping the flame in his hand like some precious fragile thing, his eyes falling halfway shut. It’s romance lighting, softening the harsh lines and angles of his face, brightening the blue in his pale eyes. By the time he’s snapping the lighter shut again and tilting his head back, Rick’s halfway to him and approaching fast. He sinks down to the curb near Daryl- not too near, even now Daryl tends to pull away.

“Got another one?” he asks, and Daryl holds up the box and shakes it soundlessly- empty.

“Don’t seem like a smoker,” he observes, and Rick shakes his head no, because he’s not- never was, technically, hasn’t smoked once since the last time he and Shane had snuck out behind the shed. Daryl considers him a long moment, then holds out his hand, offering the cigarette he just lit.

Last time, it had been a comfort thing- smoking calmed the nerves- and something to do, some mindless motion of hands, casual social interaction to ward off the awkwardness. This time, it’s something else entirely.

Rick takes the cigarette and nods in thanks and takes a long drag, reveling in the poison he can feel in his lungs, tasting beer and Daryl- _you’re kissin’ me, Rick, stoppit_ \- and he doesn’t cough this time, doesn’t choke. It’s a test, a trial, he can feel the measure of Daryl’s judgment on him, not like the fierce competition with Shane but simply Daryl trying to figure out who Rick is. 

“How long were you married?” Daryl asks after a while, when he’s forgiven Rick the intrusion and relaxed into his space again, spreading out like a lazy cat to take up more room than should be physically possible, settling himself into the blank areas around Rick.

“Sixteen years,” Rick replies. Sixteen and a quarter, really, but three extra months of living in denial, of completely missing something that was right under his nose, is not something to brag about.

“Never even thought about it, did you?” Daryl asks after an even longer silence, when the cigarette is burned away almost to nothing and the streetlight is starting to flicker like a strobe light, trying to decide if dawn is close enough for it to cut out. Rick smiles a little and shakes his head, because he hadn’t- not even once, not even for a second. He’d seen Lori on their wedding day, her white dress simple and regal, her dark hair coiled into a simple braid, her dark away wet with tears she couldn’t shed without destroying her makeup- he’d seen her, and he’d known he loved her, and there had never for a second been anyone else who could compete with her. Not even Shane, and Rick had carried a torch for him from before he even knew the meaning of the term.

“That sucks,” Daryl offers, careful and unsure, like he doesn’t know what else to say and can only assume this is the appropriate response- Rick dares a glance at his left hand and sees no ring, no pale mark or indentation in the skin where one might have been- and maybe Daryl doesn’t understand what Rick’s lost because he’s never had anything like it himself. But he’s not offering false understanding or hollow sympathy, just support and silence, and if Rick is maybe starting to think about it now, well. That’s his business.

He leans back against the curb and stretches his legs out before him, mimicking Daryl’s pose, and tips his head back to the sky and tries to blow a smoke ring with what’s left of the cigarette.

\-----

He dreams that night of Daryl, the sort of dream that ruins sheets and requires cold showers to wash away, the sort of dream that lingers in the mind and makes it hard to look a person in the eyes ever again, knowing what your subconscious thinks of them. He wakes up sweaty and gasping, his hair falling into his eyes and plastering wetly to his skin, the blankets tangled into a knot between his legs, his underwear low on his hips and slipping further down with each second.

Normally he would shy away from this, respect the other person, feel disappointed and disgusted in himself- normally he has a wife in bed next to him, murmuring questions about what’s wrong- normally, he gets sex regularly enough that the dreams never get this intense. He wants- god, he wants- and instead of getting up and staggering into the bathroom for a shockingly cold shower he rolls over onto his belly, bracing his head on one arm and reaching down with the other hand, wrapping his fingers around his aching erection and shuddering at the feel of it. He gasps against his own skin, bites down on his wrist, and thrusts up into his hand.

He’s dreamed of other men before- hell, he’s experimented with other men before, at bars while he was at the academy. He knows himself well enough to know only a certain sort of man would appeal to him. Sex between men is so often a struggle, a competition, a battle with a clear winner and loser, and Rick doesn’t want that. He deals with that often enough in his job, with Shane- and that knowledge had been what had finally put him off his lifelong crush on his best friend- he doesn’t need that in the bedroom as well. In that regard, Daryl is perfect- compliance without weakness, submission without total surrender. Not a challenge to be conquered, not a toy to be played with, but the perfect middle ground, a matched set, a natural follower without whom Rick’s natural leader means nothing.

Rick imagines Daryl with him, beneath him, imagines his fingers pressing marks into the broad planes of Daryl’s back, imagines Daryl’s hands twisting into Rick’s hair, imagines the long vulnerable line of Daryl’s throat as he tosses his head back. Tries to imagine his face as he comes, and can’t see it, can’t superimpose such a moment of open emotion, so much lack of control, on a man who has exhibited nothing but control.

Then Rick himself is seizing up, back arching and hand twisting uselessly into the pillowcase, his orgasm ripping through him with surprising strength, not some shallow guilty furtive thing, but almost making him scream. After, he shivers in the sweaty tangle of sheets and tries to settle his breathing back to normal and imagines kissing Daryl, slow and deep, cigarette taste and scratchy stubble, and wonders what he’s supposed to do with this.


	2. deux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less sexiness this chapter, sorry darlings. Next one might take a bit longer to get up, too, as it's only half-written.
> 
> As a side note, the bar Daryl works at is based on a real-life bar that I visited once in Colorado. Every detail about the place- all the way down to the method of cleaning- came from that bar.

Rick goes back to the bar on Thursday night, because Thursday seems like a nice tame night, not good for drinking, and it hardly seems like a Lady’s Night sort of place. Sure enough, he walks in at ten minutes before closing and there’s no one there, not even Daryl behind the bar.

“ ‘M closed, call a cab an’ go home,” Daryl’s voice calls from the back room, and Rick smiles a little at the gruff order, the tired exasperation of a man not paid nearly enough to deal with drunk people all night. A moment later, the man himself comes out, and upon seeing Rick, stops dead in his tracks, his face doing a complicated thing where it tries to express several emotions all at once, finally settling on forced neutrality, anger sparking in his pale eyes. “The hell are you doin’ here?” he demands.

For one absurd, insane moment, Rick is frozen on the spot, thinking _he knows_ \- images from his dreams, his own indulgent imaginings flashing through his mind- but that’s ridiculous, that’s impossible. “What?” he asks, and he can’t help but sound like the word’s punched out of him, like he’s breathless.

“You’re a _cop_ ,” Daryl says, as if Rick’s somehow forgotten. “Go to bed, dumbass. Less likely to get yourself killed when you ain’t exhausted.”

So, anger, yes- fueled by concern. Rick is inordinately touched, and grateful for the low light in the bar, which hopefully hides the faint blush he can feel warming his cheeks. He allows himself a smile and a soft chuckle and moves forward to the bar.

“Couldn’t sleep even if I was in bed,” he says. “Too used to having someone else there.” It sounds acceptable in his head and lewd as he says it, an invitation- and Daryl being okay with Rick not coloring inside all the lines is not remotely the same as him being interested- a flirtation, although maybe that’s just because that’s where Rick’s head is at anymore. Whatever the case, he doesn’t get the chance to retract it- he doesn’t need to, as Daryl snorts and looks away, tired of apologizing for shit that’s beyond his control but not knowing what else to do with this information.

“They make drugs for that,” he says, turning and heading back towards the back room. He sweeps one arm out, indicating the bar. “Get that shit off there,” he says as he disappears through the doorway.

The ‘shit’ in question was a few stray bottles and glasses still sitting on the bar, some cigarette butts and a flattened beer can used as ashtray, shredded little twists of paper that might have been a beer label ripped to pieces by a nervous habit, and what looks suspiciously like beer puke in a puddle on one end of the bar. Rick trashes the bottles and the ashtray and all the paper twists he can be bothered to pick up and puts the glasses in the bin of dirty glasses under the bar, and he’s debating what to do with the puke- he’s leaning strongly towards _refuse to touch with a ten foot pole_ \- when Daryl comes back in, an open bottle of beer in one hand and a garden hose with a spray-nozzle head in the other.

Rick is enough of a student of the school of cause and effect to guess what comes next, and immediately ducks away from the bar, carefully and quickly maneuvering himself around behind Daryl. The other man points the nozzle at the bar, takes a long swallow of beer, and pulls the trigger, the high-pressure water jet blasting out and pounding the bar, washing away the night’s sins. 

“Classy place,” Rick mutters, meant to be for himself, but he’s evidently close enough that Daryl hears him over the blasting of the hose. He snorts and shrugs one shoulder.

“Pays the bills,” he says, and shuts off the hose, the bar descending into instant silence save for the water dripping everywhere. Daryl begins to roll up the hose into a loose careless loop around his arm, awkward for his trying not to spill his beer or let the nozzle head drip on him. “Want one?” he asks, waving the beer at Rick, and before Rick can decide, he adds honestly, “They’re warm.”

“No, thank you,” Rick says. He steps back out of Daryl’s way as he drags the hose back into the back room, stepping out wide over a puddle on the cement floor. There’s a drain near the center of the room but there’s not enough slant to the floor for the water to flow there naturally, so he’s not surprised when Daryl returns with a towel in one hand and a floor squeegee in the other. He is surprised when Daryl thrusts the squeegee at him- apparently he’s been conscripted. Fair enough, all things considered, so Rick takes the squeegee and sets to work sweeping the larger puddles towards the drain- a vague stab at cleanliness seems to be the philosophy here- while Daryl swipes the towel across the bar under the pretense of drying it off.

They’re both damp from mist and back spray from the hose, so when they lock up and head outside, Rick finds himself shivering. It’s late enough in the year that frost is crisping the grass and limning the windowpanes, that he can see his breath in the coldest hours of the night. They head to their respective cars, parked close together but not side-by-side, and Rick tilts his head back to study the stars, which always seem clearer and brighter on the cold nights.

“Why don’t you get a better job, if you don’t like it here?” he asks, and it’s a fair question, if a bit obvious, but it’s clearly overstepping some sort of boundary, because Daryl goes subtly tense beside him. Maybe Rick’s the only one allowed to share, maybe Daryl’s allowed to know Rick’s secrets but not vice versa, maybe Daryl is just humoring him by playing armchair psychologist and friend- any maybe it is, the question is suddenly vitally important instead of idly curious.

Then Daryl says, “Never got my GED,” and Rick fills in all the blanks- never got my GED tended to follow never graduated high school- and begins to think that maybe the problem is Daryl’s demons are a little more deeply rooted than Rick’s, that he can match Rick’s _my wife cheated on me_ and raise him something older and uglier.

Rick is a cop, a cop in backwoods Georgia no less, where the average line of thinking is still rooted in nineteenth-century principles. He’s not blind. He just chooses not to see, sometimes, because once you start looking for those signs in people, you can’t stop. He hadn’t wanted to _solve_ Daryl, hadn’t wanted anything from the man he wasn’t willing to give- but now that he’s seeing it, he can’t unsee it, the pieces falling into place and he can’t stop them. If Daryl wasn’t abused as a child, and badly, Rick would eat his own hat.

It feels wrong to know that, somehow, like Rick’s stolen something from Daryl that he’d wanted Daryl to freely give him. He does nothing, says nothing- there is nothing to say anyways, the silence suddenly riddled with pitfalls- just tucks his hands into his pockets and shivers at the cold and his damp clothes, and by the time they’ve reached the point where they have to split off to go to their own cars, Daryl is feeling secure enough to add, “Don’t know what I’d do with any money, anyways. Never had more than what I needed.”

Lori had been a housewife, which always strains the finances, and a Sheriff’s Deputy isn’t exactly breaking the bank- but Rick’s life has always managed to be Christmas trees stuffed to overflowing with presents, road trips to places like the Grand Canyon, steaks on the grill every summer Sunday- not rich by any means, but doing better than just getting by- he tries to imagine life with every expense cut down to the bone and can’t.

“Didn’t mean to pry,” he says, because every bit of themselves that has passed between them has been offered freely, not asked for, and Rick still feels like he’s broken some unspoken rule, even if Daryl’s forgiven him for it. Daryl shrugs and moves away, settling himself on his car’s back bumper, pulling his cigarette pack out of his pocket and shaking one out.

“You didn’t,” he says, and looks up at Rick through the fringe of his hair, the tiniest hint of a smile quirking the corner of his lips. “ ‘S like I said, I’m bad at talkin’.”

Rick nods once, an acknowledgment, and says, “Night, Daryl.”

“Hey,” Daryl says right when Rick reaches his car. He turns, finds the other man approaching at a lazy stroll, something in his hand. He hesitates just short of arm’s reach from Rick, suddenly shy, his eyes downcast and his face shading dark in the night. For a moment he wavers, paper crinkling loudly in his hand as he compulsively closes his fingers into a fist- fight or flight. Then he shoves it at Rick, who grabs for it- but the slip of paper is feather-light and glides, drifts through the air like a whisper, and Rick grabs blindly after it and ends up chasing it a few steps. “Take a damn sleeping pill,” Daryl adds while Rick’s picking the paper up off the ground, and when he looks over at the other man, Daryl’s already gone, getting to his car, firmly and pointedly keeping his face turned away from Rick.

Rick looks at the paper in his hands- a receipt for gas, thirty eight dollars and four cents, paid cash- never has more than he needs, indeed. Before he has the chance to get confused, the headlights from Daryl’s car wash over him and shine through the receipt for a second, turning it into a pane of thin glass in Rick’s hand- thin enough for him to see the writing on the other side.

It’s a phone number.

It’s nothing, it means nothing- Daryl just doesn’t want him showing up at odd hours of the night again, is all- but Rick smiles all the same, smiles into the darkness at the taillights disappearing into the distance, smooths the paper against the heel of his hand and tucks it almost reverentially into his shirt pocket, to protect it.

He sleeps better that night than he has since the divorce.

\-----

It’s been over two weeks, and he’s mostly managed to forget the business card sitting in the odds-and-ends drawer in the kitchen- it used to be pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet, Damocles’ sword hanging over his head, but he’d found himself staring at it for far too long one morning, blank and absent before his coffee, his mind lazily flipping through all the possibilities and outcomes with increasing grimness, and he’d snatched it down and hidden it away to spare himself the unnecessary stress.

Friday morning, Daryl’s number claims the spot of honor in the drawer, too precious to throw away even though it’s been programmed into Rick’s phone, and the business card comes out while Rick sits at his kitchen table and drinks coffee and stares at it some more, like that can solve any one of his problems. Lori’s not quite four months pregnant, three and a half months divorced from Rick and out of his house and- supposedly- his life, save for when they pass Carl off to each other and pretend this arrangement is fair to anyone. It’s far too soon to be talking paternity test- there’s no crime committed here, no need to push for a prenatal test, nothing more vital than personal satisfaction hinging on this- but personal satisfaction is what Shane is all about, being proven right, proven best, at all costs, even if it means grinding whatever lingering friendliness there is between them into the dust.

Honestly, in some ways, Rick gets it. He’s a father. He’s _been there_. He’s watched the woman he loves struggle and suffer through the many trials and denials of pregnancy. He’s done the late-night craving runs. He’s hauled a heavy crib up a flight of stairs. He’s been horrified by the videos and the stories in all the classes. He’s stood in the aisle of a Target, holding up a pair of shoes, struck dumb by the tininess of it. He gets it, and Shane is starting to get it too, and maybe it’s not some vicious need to be proven right that’s pushing Shane to want this, but a desperate fear of being proven _wrong_.

He does his research that night, because three and a half months is more than long enough to live in total denial, to refuse to accept the change in his life, in the world around him. She’s moved on- she has MOVED ON written all over in big bold letters- so it’s past time he did the same.

He’s waiting on the front porch the following morning, because Lori’s typical routine when she’s dropping Carl off is to wait in the car until Carl’s inside and she can confirm with her own eyes that Rick is, if nothing else, still alive- they’re not at a point yet where they can casually chat like civilized adults, and probably never will be. He watches Lori see him, watches her think it through- then she sighs and shuts the car engine off and climbs out after Carl.

“Go on inside, baby,” she says to their son, who looks between them with resigned suspicion.

“You guys are gonna fight again?” he asks in clear dismay, and Rick feels about two inches tall. “Shouldn’t you be done with that? You’re already divorced.”

“Don’t you have homework?” Lori counters, cool and warning, and Carl scoffs and mutters something about it being Saturday, he has the whole weekend, and gives them a sour look before heading inside. She stares after him, visibly gearing herself up before she turns to regard Rick. “Did you need something?”

“I looked into that paternity test Shane wants last night,” Rick begins, but stops himself when Lori shifts her weight and shakes her head.

“It took you two weeks to look into it?” she asks, amazed and a touch worried- he was too big a part of her for too long for her to not worry over him, even if worry is the closest thing to a positive emotion she can spare for him anymore. “Are you really okay, Rick?” she presses, taking a step closer and lowering her voice confidentially, like they’re sharing secrets here, like there are any secrets left to be shared between them. “You’ve never been one to put off doing something just because you don’t want to do it.” 

“I’m fine,” Rick says, and for the first time, he’s not just saying it. He actually means it. They’re miles away from where they started out, and last night he’d finally admitted to himself that they’re never going to get back to where they were. Shane can have her, if he wants- Rick is finally letting himself move on. “I had some things to sort through.”

Lori just looks at him, sad and helpless- the same look she used to give him early on in their marriage, when she’d accused him of pushing her away, keeping her out- icy curtains inside his soul, dividing him into what was _his_ and what was to be shared, and she could never define their edges or accept their presence. Maybe that should have been a hint, right from the start, that they were mismatched.

“Wanted to ask you why you wanted a prenatal test,” Rick says mildly. Lori shakes her head a little and rolls her shoulders, the movement not quite defined enough to be a shrug.

“Does it matter?” she asks. “It’s barely an inconvenience for you.”

“It’s dangerous for the baby,” Rick tells her, something in him steadily ticking over towards anger, at her flippant attitude, at her condescension, at her belief that she has any right to put him in this position. “It can cause a miscarriage.”

“It’s a very small chance,” Lori says, and she’s tipping towards anger too, the primal, instinct-based fury of a mother who is sensing criticism of her parenting skills. And maybe Rick is crossing some lines, because she isn’t his wife and the baby probably isn’t his child, but there are more important things at stake here than Shane’s fragile male ego. When she’d had Carl, Lori had been the sort of paranoid mother that refused to eat peanut butter while pregnant out of fear of inflicting a peanut allergy on the child. The only thing that’s changed from then to now is Shane.

“Why does it have to be now?” Rick asks. “What’s so important it can’t wait five months?”

Lori’s jaw sets and her eyes go flat, her hands curling into fists, her body written in clear lines of anger. She’s not just mad at him, but he’s an easier target, safer to have it out with. It’s not like she can screw up their relationship any more than it already is.

“If it’s yours, Shane is worried you’ll want me back,” she says, and it’s an interesting cocktail of self-derision and arrogance, _you don’t want me_ mixing with _I know you want me_. Rick scoffs and smiles, bitter and victorious.

“Tell him he’s got nothin’ to worry about,” he says, and Lori flinches like he’s slapped her- which he has, verbally at least.

“We don’t need you involved in this, Rick,” she says coldly, tit for tat. “We can do this without you. I just thought you’d want to be part of it.”

“No, I’m involved,” Rick replies, easily matching her for coldness- she’s out of her league here, Rick can freeze out anyone, he’s naturally cold under that thin veneer of civility all humans maintain, glittering ice instead of the fire that burns bright in most people. “Just wanted to make sure you knew the risks.”

“You think I didn’t know?” Lori demands, making a sharp, meaningless gesture with one hand. “You think I’d do something, _anything_ , like that without knowing all of the risks?”

Rick clucks his tongue and shakes his head, looking away over her head, casually dismissive- and he’s being an asshole and he knows it, and he just can’t stop himself, can’t bring himself to care. “Now, I’ve made assumptions about what you know before,” he says. “ ‘S how we all got here, remember?”

For one wild moment, he thinks she’s going to slap him- he deserves it. Instead she shakes her head and turns away, heading down the porch stairs. She pauses on the walkway, not quite turning far enough to actually risk looking at him.

“I’m picking Carl up at noon tomorrow,” she says. “He has a science project to work on, and it’s too big to take out of the garage.”

“Sure,” Rick says, and heads inside, barely managing to prevent himself from slamming the front door on her as she slams her car door on him. He drops his weight back against the door for a moment, grounding himself in the solid pressure of it against his shoulder blades, closes his eyes and basks for a moment in the cool darkness of the entryway. Then he pushes forward, heading into the kitchen, where Carl is hunched over one of his textbooks, pretending to do his homework.

Rick expects anger, or disappointment- Carl’s in an awkward stage, stuck between kid and teenager, stuck between two parents- but what he gets is curiosity. “Whose number is that?” he asks, pivoting in his chair to point at the drawer he’d clearly gone looking for a pencil in and left sitting open, the gas receipt with Daryl’s number sitting pretty on top of the rest of the stuff.

“Daryl,” Rick says without thinking, because Daryl’s become important enough to him, even in so short a time, as to be important to everyone in Rick’s life. Had Carl been more than weekend visitor, he would know Daryl- but had Carl been more than a weekend visitor, it would be because Rick’s life hadn’t fallen apart, and there would be no Daryl in their lives. “He’s a friend,” he adds.

“Oh,” Carl says, disappointed. “I thought it was a girl,” he says, and Rick blinks and starts to say something twice before he finally finds the words.

“A girl?” he echoes.

“Yeah,” Carl says, in his best _old people are stupid_ voice. “Girls write their numbers down like that, Dad. Friends just tell you.”

There are so many things going in in those few simple sentences, Rick hardly knows where to begin. Daryl is most definitely not a girl- but the principle Carl seems to be driving at still applies, assuming it’s not generation-specific. However, another, more pressing question, rises up and overtakes all thoughts of Daryl for the moment.

“What girls have been givin’ you their numbers?” he asks, because it’s the first he’s heard of this. He absolutely _does not_ want his son taking dating advice from Shane- it’d been different when they were in high school, but Rick sees it more clearly now, how much of a jackass Shane had been, how many girls he’d strung along and hearts he’d broken. Shane is a passive misogynist, a trait that only ever manifests in stupid jokes and condescending words when there are no women around- he loves them too much to risk showing them how little he thinks of them- and Rick doesn’t want him teaching that crap to Carl.

Carl, to Rick’s amusement, turns stop-sign-red. “No one!” he yelps, and his voice soars up and lodges in the rafters, cracking so piteously that Rick winces in sympathy and backs off a bit.

“A’right,” he allows soothingly, and Carl turns back to his book, scribbling furiously on the worksheet in front of him, and Rick watches him for a moment. Carl’s at the same age as Rick and Shane were when they started noticing girls- Shane quite a bit more than Rick, who might as well have been wearing blinders in the form of his crush on his best friend, only occasionally seeing around the edges and noticing other people- he’d been kind of pitiful, looking back on it now, but it’s all said and done and over now, and he’s not giving himself over so completely to anyone ever again. He’s done with that. “You have a science project to work on?” he asks.

“Yeah, it’s at Shane’s house,” Carl says, the blush receding at the change in subject, and Rick can’t even begin to name the emotion he feels at his son deliberately not referring to Shane’s house as ‘home’. “It sucks,” he adds, and he could be talking about so many things, so Rick doesn’t ask, doesn’t assume. Instead, he looks at the textbook, the worksheet with complicated strings of numbers above his nonsensical, conversation-changing scribbles- he thinks of the empty, lonely week days with his son and his ex playing family with his treacherous best friend, and it’s all so vastly unfair he’s suddenly sick of it. Carl isn’t here to not get distracted while he does his homework, he’s here to spend time with his father, and if Lori doesn’t like that, they can switch so she’s only got Carl on the weekends instead.

“How about a movie instead of this?” he asks, reaching out to flip up the corner of the textbook lightly, and Carl looks up at him and grins, sudden and bright, like somewhere along the way he’s forgotten there’s more to Rick than just embittered ex-husband.

“Yeah,” he says, like there’s no other possible answer, and there isn’t, not really. He lunges to his feet and dashes out of the kitchen like he thinks the offer comes with a deadline and is soon to be retracted, and Rick follows after him, not nearly as energetic but no less excited, and for one glorious Saturday, all is right in the world once more.

\-----

Sunday dawns bright and cool, the air thick and heavy with low-lying mist, a promise of warmth later- the last good day of the year. Carl makes himself hot cocoa for breakfast and draws figures in the fast-melting frost limning the window frames and talks nonstop about the movie like he’s eight years old again, watching Beetlejuice for the first time- Shane’s recommendation, of course, and one Lori had fought him on tooth and nail, citing it to be too scary a movie for a boy his age- Rick had steered clear, and taught Carl the proper words to the Banana Boat song while they were busy arguing.

Lori shows up at noon on the dot, an extremely unhappy twist to her lips when Carl gleefully tells her his homework is undone and they’d gone to see a movie instead, but she’s still sore enough after yesterday’s argument to say nothing to Rick. She just shepherds Carl along to the car and keeps her back turned to Rick, and it’s sad that it’s all come to this, and sadder still for how little Rick cares. He watches them leave and stands on the porch a good while afterwards, enjoying the mellow weather, then abruptly turns on his heel and heads inside, an idea kindling and inspiration sparking.

There are two steaks in the freezer. Rick digs them out and waffles for too long a time, standing over the sink with the plastic bags in hand, the drawer with Daryl’s number in it at his hip- then he tosses the steaks into the sink to defrost, digs the steak rub spice out of the cabinet, and fires off a text message before he can think better of it.

He’s outside in the back yard, watching the fire burning merrily in the belly of the grill and trying to gage its temperature by size and well-earned experience, when he hears a car door slam out on the street. A moment later Daryl’s there, having no doubt followed the smell of the smoke, confusion lining his face and wrinkling his nose up in a way Rick’s really too old to be considering cute.

“You make real food too, huh?” he asks, looking at the grill. Rick had told him to bring beer and he had done so- a six-pack, cool enough that the cardboard holder was starting to tear wetly from the condensation. Rick takes a break to rescue one and pops the top off against the lip of the grill with a practiced twist of his wrist.

“Real food?” he asks, eyebrows rising, between sips of beer. He wants to go easy on this stuff, he wants today to stay crisp and clear, not blurry with alcohol.

“Yeah,” Daryl says, putting the beer down a measured distance away from Rick so he won’t trip on it, then backs up a few steps and stands there, awkward in his pointlessness. “Offered me eggs, last time,” he adds gruffly, looking away, absently rubbing his hands off on his pants- a slightly nicer pair than he normally wears, in that there are no gaping holes over his knees, although he has walked out the bottom hems and one of his pockets has been torn away.

“Eggs aren’t real food?” Rick asks, amused, and Daryl gives him a blank look.

“No,” he says after a moment, like he’s trying very hard to not imply Rick is an idiot, and Rick chuckles into his beer. He’s in a good mood- he’d had a good time with Carl, and Daryl is here, and he’s grilling steaks on Sunday again- it’s not summer, and it’s a poor imitation of what it used to be, but it’s more than he could’ve asked for, more than he would’ve expected a few short weeks ago. But he’s the only one- Daryl is increasingly agitated, uncomfortable with his inactivity- he’s not one for standing still, not one for not doing something, and Rick hadn’t planned for this all that well. “Man, ain’t you got friends to hang out with?” he asks finally, and he looks rejected already as he says it, like he expects Rick to snap out of it and remember his whole host of other friends and tell Daryl to leave, now, please, so he can call them up and they can all laugh at the little redneck boy, trying to be friends with one of the cool kids.

Rick’s never been one of the cool kids, not even in high school, when Shane was the school’s darling, star quarterback and every girl’s wet dream- Rick had just been his kinda loser friend that Shane hung out with for reasons unknown. He’d been a good way for girls to get close to Shane, and a shoulder for them to cry on when Shane did what he did best and broke their hearts, but that was as much fame as ever touched him.

He shakes his head, shrugs one shoulder. “My ex got my best friend in the divorce,” he says, and takes another sip of beer, shifting so he can watch Daryl out of the corner of his eye, see how fast it took him. By the time Rick’s got him in sight, however, he’s already figured it out, the planes of his face shifting, realigning themselves with realization. He doesn’t ask- _the other man?_ \- but he doesn’t need to. He hunches in on himself, like he doesn’t know what to say, like he doesn’t know why he’s here, like he doesn’t know why Rick bothers with him, and it’s so very different from the casual, self-entitled confidence Rick sees in Lori that he wants to go over and wrap his arms around the other man and just hold him until he melts. But that wouldn’t be allowed- Rick would probably be gutted if he tried- so he turns back to the grill.

“Go get the steaks, they’re on the counter,” he says, gesturing broadly with the beer hand to indicate the back door to the house. Daryl says nothing, just goes, hesitating on the doorstep like he’s debating whether he’s really allowed inside.

“ ‘S this you, then?” he asks as he comes back outside, sliding the plate of steak onto the grill’s sideboard so fast Rick has to slap a hand down to catch the edge of the plate and keep it from going right off the other side. Daryl’s already moving away, sounding derisive and dismissive, still a man who expects the rug to be yanked out from under him at any second- like any form of friendship that benefits him and not just the other person is something he suspects only exists in fairy tales and elementary-school playgrounds. “Grillin’ steaks on Sundays, normal people shit?”

“Yeah, kinda,” Rick says, wary now, watching Daryl carefully. He’s not relaxing, like he has all other times he’s been around Rick, not slowly settling himself into Rick’s space but still clearly defining boundaries. But every time Rick starts thinking he’s pushed too far with Daryl, the other man rallies and pushes back, making himself comfortable with every intrusion, every imposition, Rick makes, so he’s not willing to pull up stakes and retreat just yet.

“Ain’t my kinda thing,” Daryl mutters, and Rick shrugs, refusing to let it get to him.

“What is your kinda thing, then?” he asks, and stabs the meat fork into one of the steaks and lays it on the grill.

“Deer,” Daryl says, and Rick snorts beer up his nose. He scrubs at his face with the back of his hand, giving Daryl a dark look as the other man allows a ghost of a smile to touch his lips.

“You’re a hunter?” he asks, and Daryl nods, a single dip of his chin. Rick allows himself a daring look, dragging his eyes up the curve of Daryl’s bicep, a brief study of the broad line of his shoulder, and hazards, “Bow?”

“Crossbow,” Daryl says, and Rick nods and looks away, biting at his lower lip a bit. Probably not licensed, probably not in-season- but that’s for Fish and Wildlife to sort out, and Rick highly doubts Daryl’s out there hunting for kicks. The punishment for poaching doesn’t even qualify for a slap on the wrist, not even for repeated offenders- it takes real creativity to earn yourself jail time for poaching, and something tells him Daryl’s not the sort of hunter who’s gonna have tree-hugging city boys sneaking up on him anyways.

He stabs the other steak and lets it hang over the grill for a moment, a single drop of blood gathering on it and falling into the flames, and he looks back at Daryl, eyebrow raised. It takes him a moment, but then he says, “Rare,” and Rick drops the steak onto the grill.

“Lori used to make pancakes on Sunday,” he says, sudden even to him, his mouth run away before his mind could reel it in. He feels obliged to continue after that, instead of leaving it to sink like a stone into the silence, there to fester and rot between them. “They were terrible,” he says. “Couldn’t hardly wash ‘em down, even with syrup.” He took another sip from his beer and glanced at Daryl, quick and careful. “She wanted us to be normal people like that.”

“Didn’t have to eat ‘em,” Daryl points out, and finally- _finally_ \- gets himself a beer from the six-pack. He doesn’t claim one of the lawn chairs for himself, but he relaxes all the same, some intangible air of high walls and cool words melting into something softer and warmer.

“Yeah, I did,” Rick says. “That’s marriage.”

“Fuckin’ stupid,” Daryl mutters, and Rick can’t argue with that. 

He goes inside instead, gets the vegetables for roasting- corn on the cob and potato wedges, pineapple slices and mushrooms, and Daryl says nothing about any of it but passes judgment all the same, giving the mushrooms in particular a long, suspicious stare. He eats with his fingers when he can, holding his silverware awkwardly when he can’t, picking over his plate like a child, turning up his nose at the icky things. Rick’s pretty sure the mushrooms go over the fence to the neighbor’s dog when he’s not looking- the big, lazy black lab goes is sprawled on the neighbors’ back porch when Rick goes inside to grab some paper towels, and is sitting neatly at the fence, all big brown eyes and pitiful whines, when he comes back out- but Daryl says nothing and Rick doesn’t ask, so long as it’s only the ones on Daryl’s plate going over. The sun sets early and the dusk is cool enough to chase them inside, where Daryl in his rough, dirty masculinity is a sharp contrast to the light, delicately feminine touch the house is decorated with. He doesn’t leave, not until the beer’s all gone and he’s had a while to get over any potential buzz, and when he’s gone, it seems echoingly empty without him, like his quiet presence fills up all the empty corners.

Rick goes to bed late that night, and sleeps soundly, and goes to work the next morning, and doesn’t remember to miss Lori, to mourn his old life, even once.


End file.
